John Morgan is an established independent Farm Management Advisor having worked as a senior consultant for Genus Management (now Promar) and ADAS.

Key enthusiasms revolve around improved transfer of information between the theorists and farmers. Technology transfer experience has been gained during time as a Director of Operations of the Maize Growers Association and work with farmer groups and cooperatives. John is FACTS qualified.

As a farm management advisor John works with a group of mixed farming businesses across the southwest trying to improve their technical and ultimately financial performance. Advice/training has also been provided to public and private organisations including DEFRA, Dairy Co, FWAG, Natural England and the Environment Agency in England and Wales.

John is one of a small team who over the last five years have delivered workshop and farm walk advice via the National Cross Compliance Advice service.

As a specialist level advisor, John delivers workshops and one to one visits via the England Catchment Sensitive Farming Delivery Initiative. Areas of work include Soil management, Organic manure management, Nutrient Management Planning and Infrastructure Audits.

John has delivered numerous introduction and specialist events for the soils for profit project with a clear focus on soil and nutrient management.

John leads the small team running the Maize Growers Association providing written, via MGA publications, verbal via conferences and farm meetings advice to the 700 or so members across the UK.

John as part of the Creedy Team have dilivered well over 100 Practical use of Organic Manures Workshops and this interest in making the most of organic manures has led to a deep underdstanding of the old and new NVZ rules and how they impact on farm. John and the Creedy team complete NVZ records for clients across the southwest.

John was a member of the ADAS led team working on the NVZ derogation case and has delivered workshops on NVZ’s to south west Environment Agency Staff and via the National NVZ information service run by the EA

John continues to work with clients in relation to entry, organic entry and higher level stewardship schemes.

Roger Hitchings recently retired from his post as Principal Consultant in Information Services at the Organic Research Centre, Elm Farm after 15 years of service.

His background is in soil science and education, and he was a commercial organic vegetable grower for 8 years. His work at ORC focused on knowledge transfer including farm advisory visits to commercial clients and through schemes such as the Organic Conversion Information Service and Farming Connect. The work also included the delivery of short courses and training events, and a wide range of project engagement.

He was a member of the UK Government’s Advisory Committee on Organic Standards and Chair of its Technical Committee for the 7 years of its existence. He's a pool member of the EU Expert Group for Technical Advice on Organic Production (EGTOP) and was a member of the sub-group that recently looked at standards for organic protected cropping.

Marianne Landzettel: ‘Give me five more minutes’ signals Gualu Goud as he’s standing on top of one of his five compost heaps working the top layer with a hoe. I met Gualu earlier this month in a village in the eastern Indian state of Odisha (formerly Orissa). He’s been a cotton farmer for most of his life. Things were ok until about 10 years ago when yields started to drop even though he used increasing amounts of expensive chemical fertilisers.